On 12-Aug-61 Hanratty’s burglary loot in Harrow included ‘six sets of gold cufflinks with the initial 'E' on them’. Woffinden reports that, but when he describes Hanratty seeing the gold cufflinks on the train (page 122) there is no mention of the initial 'E' on them which was in all the newspaper reports like the one you copied.

Could he have thought this would be too much of a coincidence for his readers to accept?

Would Hanratty not likewise have tried the Windsor? And even if he didn't, would he not have noticed it over a two day period?

You may recall the exchange of comments on this with the poster who lived in Ingledene ...

Me: "Would there have been a more obvious way of identifying it? For example: “It is opposite the big Windsor Hotel.”

Kerry: "It is indeed opposite the Windsor but the houses either side of mine also are. Do you mean a better way of identifying the actual location?"

Me: "I just find it strange that in trying to describe Ingledene he did not simply say it was one of the B&B’s opposite the Windsor."

Kerry: "I see what you mean Nick, it would have been easy to say that as it can be quite clearly seen from the front of the house. In fact i'm looking at the Windsor right now, it's now called the Windsor Vaults though."

I also recall a poster saying that just down the street from Ingledene was a betting shop with a large illuminated sign above the door. Surely this too would have been a stand-out for anyone attempting to explain just where Ingledene was.

Graham

__________________We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

Another small but important fact which I've only just (re)discovered, concerns Hanratty's stating that one of the reasons he refused to identify his three friends in Liverpool was that one of them was wanted on a warrant for non-payment of a fine relating to hire-purchase of TV's. Swanwick stated in court that all 3000-odd outstanding warrants in Liverpool at the time were checked out, especially those relating to residents of Scotland Road and surrounding area, and not one of them referred to anything connected with televisions or hire-purchase.

The strange thing is that when Hanratty fled to Liverpool on 7th October he had, as he told Acott, no trouble in locating criminal acquaintances to ask them to give him an alibi for the time of the murder. They told him where to go.

Graham

__________________We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

There have been been a fair amount of anti-Hanratty contributions of late, so forgive me if I attempt to redress the balance.

As I said some time ago, the Liverpool/Rhyl alibi is a dead end street. Short of Hanratty being arrested, jailed, photographed and fingerprinted by the Merseyside police, no one on the orthodox side will believe his albi. That was once admitted on this site, and I have no problem with that level of scrutiny. The alibi evidence accrued so far is as much is as available and can only be weighed accordingly. Take your pick, make your judgment.

However, the alibi evidence is a sideshow. No one has to prove their innocence. Not you. Not me. Very few of us could ‘prove’ where we were a couple of months ago unless we were in regular employment, something Hanratty clearly was not. Hanratty was, as I have said before, naïve: he rather cockily believed British justice could never hang an innocent man. He was wrong of course; it has from time to time, and since he was taken the gallows in 1962 our esteemed system would have added dozens to that list of innocents, bar the abolition of hanging. Late in the day he realised this and attempted to amend his alibi, much to his detriment.

Hanratty had to say nothing. The silence was on the other side. The voice from a murder/rape car after forensic examination was… silent. The voices from witnesses who saw Hanratty go from Taplow Station carrying a gun and a bag of ammunition were….silent. The voices from those who saw him place a gun under the back of a busy London bus were….silent. I admit that the only voice of any credulity who saw him in the murder car was not silent: the problem was she spoke for someone else before she spoke for him. As for the perplexing reason why a family member of the victim identified a man answering to Hanratty’s alias in Swiss Cottage weeks before his arrest…..sheer silence. Beyond credibility actually. Beyond credulity probably.

That is the case against Hanratty. It’s rizla paper thin. The bullets can only be linked via the testimony of Nudds, whose credibility is so debased as to make his testimony absolutely worthless. The ID evidence is contaminated by Valerie Storie’s earlier effort and the conflicting evidence from those who believed they saw the murder car early morning. Rather than mount an alibi, Hanratty might have done better to let the prosecution mount its feeble case.
A hardened criminal would have known that, as would have a hardened QC. Neither Hanratty nor Sherrard, to their credit, came into that category at the time. Hanratty was badly served and served himself badly as well, it is true. But I doubt very much indeed he was the A6 murderer.

Yes he did not have to give evidence, but he did and therefore it is worth looking at what he said if we want to try and discover the truth.

S - 'How did you find your way back to the boarding-house?'

H -"I know what you are going to say : 'How did you remember it then if you can't remember it now?'."

S -'You are a bit fly, aren't you?'

H -"No, I'm not being a bit fly."

S -'How did you find your way back to the boarding-house?'

H -"I found my way back in the normal way."

S -'But you cannot give directions now?'

H -"I have given directions. The boarding-house is at the back of Dixie's facing toward a railway."

Ingledene was not "at the back of Dixie’s" or even near it. If he had really stayed at Ingledene, and returned there the second night, he would have been able to provide some accurate information about where it was - particularly as there were such obvious landmarks (as discussed above) - rather than just indicating the very general b&b area along the railway line.

I have never said I would only accept 'cast iron' evidence (arrested, jailed etc.) for his whereabouts. Life is rarely like that, a lot of the time we have to assess whether something is more likely than not. But this does not even come into the mid-range.

With reference to Cobalt's post, it's strange, isn't it, to hear someone who support's Hanratty's innocence saying that the Liverpool Alibi is dead and buried. To me, it was never even alive and kicking, but the number of posts over the years attempting, for example, to categorically prove that he was in the sweet shop when he said he was would suggest that there are plenty who most definitely dosupport the Liverpool Alibi.

Graham

__________________We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

As for the perplexing reason why a family member of the victim identified a man answering to Hanratty’s alias in Swiss Cottage weeks before his arrest…..sheer silence. Beyond credibility actually. Beyond credulity probably.

What really is perplexing is why Hanratty's supporters keep relating this story as a fact when Janet Gregsten herself described it as an invention of the tabloid press. Stop it, please.